No Good Deed 24

A wind had risen, a head-wind as light as a zephyr, but as cold as an Edinburgh lawyer. I shivered a little. McGraw seemed not to notice. Before I could fashion any opening gambit concerning my plans. He hissed,

'What in hell you playin' at?'

'Wh-what do you mean, sir?'

He loomed over me and I took a step backward.

'You ain't been at table onct! Damn' me y'all got on this tub at St.Loo!'

'I did indeed, what of it?'

I attempted a step forward, but merely struck his significant paunch.

'What of...? Lissen up Mistuh Northrup, lucky we knowed you wuz on board. Where in hell's the vest?”

'I thought it a little conspicuous, myself', I said.

'Conspik-you-us? We supposed tuh reckanize yuh! How in hell you gonna lose enough money 'tween here and Hannibal?'

It dawned on me at last that this ruffian, and others on the Grand Turk, had been expecting my arrival, or at least that of Anson Northrup. My boarding of this particular riverboat had been serendipitous, surely? Or a had a vast network of Negroes been on the look out all over St. Louis for the fantastical design of that waistcoat?

'Lose money?' I wondered what money this might be, and whose.

'Ah 'course, lose money! Silver Dollars, Northrup. Or at least ones as is s'posed to look like 'em.'

I supposed it must be some fourrée coin that he meant. But the real Anson Northrup had had nothing else with him but what I had taken.

'Furry?' McGraw's eyebrows lowered and his forehead was creased by a frown as deep as a knife-cut. Evidently, I had said the word aloud.

'Plated base metal, Mr McGraw.' I informed him.

'How yuh gonna lose enough now, huh?' he retorted.

'Enough?' The man was clearly a half-wit, unable to express himself in any intelligible manner.

'Y'all s'posed to lose 5000 Silver Dollars on the dang boat.'

'Well, the boat must sail down-river too, after all.'

'Are yuh some kinda half-wit? T'aint no good downriver, the junk money got to travel north!'

Plainly, Mr Northrup had been involved in some very strange affairs. Be that as it might, I wondered how I could placate the big man in front of me, despite have recourse to no more than ten dollars, legal tender or counterfeit. I began to speak, thinking to bamboozle McGraw with sufficient verbiage as to enable my departure from his company.

'There has been, you might say, an unforeseen, not to say, unlikely change in circumstances, necessitating the abandonment of this stratagem.'

I saw his eyes glaze over most satisfactorily. However, his hand his hand hovered alarmingly close to the gun thrust into his belt.

'Someone else will bring the dollars, next trip up-river. Look for the waistcoat, as before.'

'Weskit?' He looked as puzzled as a dog watching a fly.

'Vest, I beg your pardon.'

I fled back to my cabin, thinking that my debarking at Hannibal could not come soon enough.